Mark Anthony Parks thinks a lot about systems, what makes them work and what fouls them up.He has to:the 34-year-old Bear resident is a helicopter mechanic.But Parks is also running as the Libertarian Party of Delaware’s candidate for the US House of Representatives, and in that effort he’s thinking about systems as well.

“Throughout history,” Parks says, “the free market has been the best system for distributing goods, services, and resources, and assuring the best standard of living for the most people.”American politicians’ failing to recognize this basic truth, he insists, has led to a staggering national debt, rising food and energy costs, and cascading failures in the banking system.

Parks speaks deliberately, as if wrestling with the concepts each time he addresses his subject.He admits to having been apolitical until invigorated by Ron Paul’s campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination.“Ron Paul taught me about the Federal Reserve, foreign policy, and the dangers of globalization,” Parks says.

“It was a political education, too, watching the media closing him out of the New Hampshire debate after he had done well enough in Iowa to earn a place on stage,” he continues.Disenchantment with the major parties and a growing commitment to protecting individual liberty from continually encroaching government led him to the Libertarian Party.

For Parks, and for a growing number of Americans across Delaware and the nation, the Libertarian message of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and limited government resonates strongly.He says, “Look at the two big parties, and they’re competing to buy your with giveaways to keep their power.It doesn’t really matter which one wins; nothing changes except that the power of the government keeps increasing.”

After that revelation, filing a challenge to Delaware’s long-standing Representative Mike Castle was a decision made fairly quickly.Parks understands the odds involved opposing Castle’s electoral juggernaut, and is realistic about what he can achieve.“I’ll wage as vigorous a campaign as possible with the resources I can muster,” he says.“The important thing is not me, but the issues.If people start talking seriously about the issues, I’m doing my part.”

Signature issues for Mark Anthony Parks include the national debt, international trade agreements, American foreign policy, and the war on drugs.

On the debt, he asks, “How do we justify putting the wealth and liberty of future generations up for sale to China and countries in the Middle East?”He sees multilateral trade agreements like NAFTA and participation in the World Trade Organization as eroding American sovereignty.

As for foreign policy, Parks’ prescription is simple:“Freedom should be spread by example, not by the barrel of a gun.Free trade with all, entangling alliances with none.”

The Federal war on drugs, he notes, has never worked and cannot succeed:“The fallacy of criminalization is that it has exponentially increase the value of the product to make it worth killing and destroying for.”